Efforts are needed and very important to discover new drugs so that we can certainly achieve or obtain other targets
Jakarta (ANTARA) – The National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN) revealed that several malaria parasites are now resistant to drugs, which makes efforts to eradicate the disease increasingly facing serious challenges, considering that malaria can be found in 40 percent of the world’s population.
Eijkman BRIN Molecular Biology Researcher Josephine Siregar said that several countries have seen the spread of parasite resistance to anti-malarial drugs, such as chloroquine, sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine, atovaquone, artemisinin and mefloquine.
Drug resistance is the ability of parasites to survive or reproduce despite the presence or administration of a drug at an appropriate dose or perhaps a slightly increased dose, but still within tolerance limits.
There are several factors that can cause the emergence of drug resistance, he said, namely the level of mutation of the parasite, how the parasite can survive, the presence of parasites in the population, how a drug has strong selection against resistant parasites or also compliance.
The World Health Organization (WHO) recorded 245 million cases of malaria worldwide in 2020, with 625 thousand deaths. Then it increased by two million cases in 2021 to 247 million cases worldwide with 619 thousand deaths.
He further said that studying biological structure is very important for understanding the target genes and mechanisms of anti-malarial drugs.
2023-10-18 13:09:15
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